OREANDA-NEWS. June 30, 2014. The Russian Federal Sanitary Service (Rospotrebnadzor) has informed that the issue of gradual resumption of Moldovan wines exports to the Russian market would be discussed only if the Moldovan authorities ensure the quality and safety of products due to be delivered to Russia. Representatives of the Moldovan Agriculture Ministry said the Moldovan wine producers had complied with the conditions requested by the Russian sanitary service and presented the appropriate materials.

Moldova did not react anyhow to the observations referring to the products’ quality - an essential condition for resuming the exports to the Russian market, according to a press release by the Russian sanitary inspection placed on the body’s website.

“In December, Rospotrebnadzor sent to the Moldovan Agriculture Ministry a string of recommendations on ensuring quality and inoffensiveness of the alcoholic products, but, so far, the Moldovan side has not taken appropriate measure to ensure the quality standards,” the communique reads.

According to the inspection, the materials forwarded by the Agriculture Ministry in November 2013, in order to unblock the exports, did not include the information on “concrete measures and actions that were undertaken by the Moldovan side to ensure quality and safety of goods, protection measures when using pesticides in vineyards, identification of potential causes that led to dibutyl phthalates in the wine products, as well as strengthening of control over goods’ quality.”.

Agriculture Minister Vasile Bumacov said the requirements forwarded by Rospotrebnadzor had been scrupulously examined each time. „We have complied with all requirements, have sent the requested materials. I personally went to Moscow to hand over the set of documents to the head of the Russian sanitary inspection, but latter avoided meeting us. All attempts, including via the Moldovan Embassy in Moscow, to meet the Rospotrebnadzor chief and to personally present the requested materials failed,” Bumacov said.

Russia fully stopped the import of Moldovan alcoholic beverages on 10 September 2013.

More economic experts consider that this blocking and incertitude regarding the final decision on resuming exports are used as an instrument of pressure on the Moldovan institutions, in order to get political and economic concessions. According to them, the situation from 2006-2007 repeats, when by evasive measures, without arguments, the unblocking of exports was postponed for a year. European specialists, who visited the Centre for Checking the alcoholic products quality, made sure that the control in Moldova is severer that in EU.

Director of Russian Federal and Local Wine Market Research Center Vadim Drobiz said that, after the initialling of the Free Trade Agreement with EU, the import procedures would be revised. It is obvious that the Moldovan and Georgian import-export procedures will be similar to the EU ones, everything will be started from the scratch, Drobiz said. Some Russian officials admitted that the decision on putting an embargo on Moldovan wines import to the Russian market political.

According to estimations by the Agriculture and Food Industry Ministry, after the embargo’s introduction in 2006, the annual losses amounted to 300 million dollars, at present the losses would be of 40 million dollars yearly.

On the other hand, Rospotrebnadzor informs that it continues the imports from the Transnistrian region and Gagauz autonomy. Sixty-two batches of alcoholic products, in quantity of 185,000 litres, were imported from Transnistria and 73 batches of wines, in amount of 229,000 litres, and 69 batches of bulk wine amounting to 1.6 million litres, were supplied from Gagauzia in the first six months of 2014. All these goods comply with the quality and inoffensiveness requirements, Rospotrebnadzor said.